Description

A free and open source Jabber/XMPP client for Android. Easy to use, reliable, battery friendly. With built-in support for images, group chats and e2e encryption.

Design principles• Be as beautiful and easy to use as possible without sacrificing security or privacy• Rely on existing, well established protocols• Do not require a Google Account or specifically Google Cloud Messaging (GCM)• Require as little permissions as possible

Conversations makes it very easy to create an account on the conversations.im server. Using that server comes with an annual fee of 8 Euro after a 6 month trial period. However Conversations will work with any other XMPP server as well. A lot of XMPP servers are run by volunteers and are free of charge.

XMPP FeaturesConversations works with every XMPP server out there. However XMPP is an extensible protocol. These extensions are standardized as well in so called XEP’s. Conversations supports a couple of those to make the overall user experience better. There is a chance that your current XMPP server does not support these extensions. Therefore to get the most out of Conversations you should consider either switching to anXMPP server that does or - even better - run your own XMPP server for you and your friends.These XEPs are - as of now:

• XEP-0065: SOCKS5 Bytestreams (or mod_proxy65). Will be used to transfer files if both parties are behind a firewall (NAT).• XEP-0163: Personal Eventing Protocol for avatars• XEP-0191: Blocking command lets you blacklist spammers or block contacts without removing them from your roster.• XEP-0198: Stream Management allows XMPP to survive small network outages and changes of the underlying TCP connection.• XEP-0280: Message Carbons which automatically syncs the messages you send to your desktop client and thus allows you to switch seamlessly from your mobile client to your desktop client and back within one conversation.• XEP-0237: Roster Versioning mainly to save bandwidth on poor mobile connections• XEP-0313: Message Archive Management synchronize message history with the server. Catch up with messages that were sent while Conversations was offline.• XEP-0352: Client State Indication lets the server know whether or not Conversations is in the background. Allows the server to save bandwidth by withholding unimportant packages.• XEP-0363: HTTP File Upload allows you to share files in conferences and with offline contacts. Requires an additional component on your server.

My review

Review from

Reviews

4.4

1,194 total

5 859

4 169

3 69

2 36

1 61

Talus Latona

Jabber is the best option for secure routine instant messaging (for special privacy needs consider Briar) and Conversations is the best Android option for secure Jabber.

It needs an option to view pictures without the pictures being downloaded into your device.

John Francis

The only client that works with my company's ancient XMPP system.

Al Thiel

I tried this as xabber disconnects often when exiting or entering wifi. I had to contact the writer as my server was not connecting. A 500 Bind failure was reported. It turned out to be another problem related to encryption being optional on my end. They identified it quickly. Works like a charm now. Very nice layout.

Alexander Sabinin

Please, place "Attach" button next to "Send" button. Modern messaging is equally about sending media as about sending text. Can you establish somehow GUI for paying for accounts at conversations.im server? Right now I can hardly understand how can I do it. Otherwise I would establish accounts for my wife and mother.

John Dougan

What functionality is there is well done, but author has some peculiar stances on things (presence, discovery, etc.) that make it unsuitable for my uses.

User reviews

Talus Latona March 14, 2018

Jabber is the best option for secure routine instant messaging (for special privacy needs consider Briar) and Conversations is the best Android option for secure Jabber.

I tried this as xabber disconnects often when exiting or entering wifi. I had to contact the writer as my server was not connecting. A 500 Bind failure was reported. It turned out to be another problem related to encryption being optional on my end. They identified it quickly. Works like a charm now. Very nice layout.

We do not use the same library as Xabber does. If you contact us at inputmice@siacs.eu and tell use your domain name and the settings used and what error message you are getting we might be able to help.

Alexander Sabinin February 27, 2018

Please, place "Attach" button next to "Send" button. Modern messaging is equally about sending media as about sending text. Can you establish somehow GUI for paying for accounts at conversations.im server? Right now I can hardly understand how can I do it. Otherwise I would establish accounts for my wife and mother.

Best XMPP client ever used. I tried every client in the market, except for paid apps. This by far the one that stole my heart. I use it everyday with my family running on my server. And it is running flawlessly. Side note: now that ejabberd supports sip calling, why not make the app uses the phone calling option based on mod_sip and let us worry about configuring turn/stun configuration. It would really help us a lot

This client is okay, it feels a little dated at this point and the refusal from the developer to add an option to turn off "Synchronize with contacts" made me drop the rating from 4 to 2 stars (GitHub Issue #2739).

Please make the contact list default behavior when pressing Back button, insted recently used contacts (pic 1). Or you can add third tab "Chat" next to "Contacts" and "Conferences" where all recently chats to appear with their tags and online statuses.

There is a distinct lack of help to permit you configuring your existing XMPP accounts on other XMPP servers. Trying to setup correct settings to securely obfurcate the end to end connection is fraught. It worked with ChatSecure on Android 4. But I suspect Google isn't making it easy to use other servers?? Update... Part of the issue maybe using an XMPP server that is enforcing OTR, they may not support OMEMO. Additionally I was trying to run it via a TOR services. That maybe exacerbated it the orbot app isnt taking the traffic from the conversations app. Long story short. I probably should stepwise create a howto unless anyone else has done that?? Also trying to get it configured on an iPad(!)

The app will remain free. You can use the app with any jabber server you want. There are some free ones as well (see https://gultsch.de/compliance_ranked.html). It's just the optional conversations.im account we charge money for.

Works with my company's jabber server.. one of few that does. Would love to see a logout button so I can stop killing the app to log out, and more exposed indicators of each person's online status, i.e. on the main screen next to each person's name.

This app is great. It allows you to use your PGP key from OpenKeychain to send and receive messages. To add an extra layer of privacy, you can also send messages through Tor by utilizing Orbot. Would definitely recommend especially for advanced users.